The Baby Whisperer Allegory
by degrassichick
Summary: Without saying another word, she closed the door behind her son and left him standing alone. On his front porch. With a screaming infant. -A newborn was never in Howard Wolowitz's plans. And babysitting said newborn was never in Sheldon Cooper's.


**Hello, hello! I just found out that **_**Big Bang**_** had their own page on FF a few days ago and I immediately tried to come up with a story to write.**

**After a while, I came up with this.**

**It did NOT end up as planned at all, so sorry about that.**

**I hope you guys like it anyways :)**

**-**

**R&R and please, no flames!**

**-**

**XOX **

**Degrassichick**

**-**

_**The Baby Whisperer Allegory **_

**-**

"HOW-WUHD! An-suh the doh-ah!" Mrs. Wolowitz impatiently sqwacked to her twenty-eight year old son who, for whatever reason, still lived with her. She just wouldn't let him leave.

Yeah, that was it.

"In a minute, Ma!" Howard screeched back at her from the safety of his bedroom, where he was in the middle of attempting to defeat the all powerful "Sheldor" on the Age of Conan.

"They won't BE THERE in a minute!" she hollered back at him.

As Howard turned to look at the door and shout a response to his mother, Sheldon chopped his head off.

Defeated, Howard grunted and rolled off of his bed. "AFK," he bitterly muttered into his headset before dropping it onto his comforter and slogging out of his room.

As he made his way to the front door, he saw his mother sitting on the couch watching "her stories." Of course _she _couldn't answer the door, what with it being only being seven-point-two feet away from her and all.

When he opened the front door, there was nobody on the porch.

Huh. So they really _weren't_ there in a minute, just like his mom had said.

As he began to close the door and inform his mother that nobody was there, he heard it.

It was something unlike anything he'd ever heard before. It was high pitched and aggressive, powerful and irate, it didn't sound like an animal…well, maybe it was a…no, it wasn't a cat.

He glanced down at the where the sound was coming from, the wooden planks of his front porch, and nearly toppled over backwards at the sight in front of him.

A pumpkin seat. With a _baby_ inside of it. A baby in a pumpkin seat was screaming its lungs out on his front porch.

He glanced around the outside environment curiously. He looked around his small neighborhood, as if it was going to give him the answers he was looking for. It gave him none.

There was a note sitting inside the basket. One word was written on the folded up paper:

_**HOWARD**_.

Clearly, it was written so that he couldn't _possibly_ mistake the note as somebody else's. He bent down to pick up the note, staring down at the baby like it was some unknown species from a planet he had yet to discover. The baby was still screaming. Its eyes weren't even open, they had no idea what was going on.

He unfolded the note and read the very short, anonymous note:

_She's yours. I can't do this._

_Sorry._

Howard didn't know for certain what it felt like when one's heart stopped beating, but he was pretty confident that it felt dangerously close to what he was feeling right now. He fell back against the chipped wood of his doorframe and stared down at the three small sentences in front of them until they all blurred together and he couldn't make out a single character except for the letter "y."

After he was done staring at the paper, he stared down at the baby; the screaming, loud-mouthed baby that just _had_ to show up at his doorstep.

What was he going to do with this…this…thing?

"HOW-WUHD!" his mother shrieked. "WHO'S AT THE DOH-UH?"

"You don't wanna know." Howard murmured back down to the baby before glancing back towards his ajar front door. How could she not _hear_ the baby?

"HOW-WUHD, YOU'RE NOT ANSUH-RING ME!"

Before he _could_ answer her, she appeared at the door and stared down at the marvel in front of them. Her eyes were widened, her mouth was dropped open; she let out a loud, raspy gasp. "How-wuhd, explain yourself right now."

He couldn't. He just stared at his mother, wide-eyed and scared, and shook his head. "I don't…I don't know how to."

"Well, this baby can_not_ be here," his mother stated abruptly. "My poke-uh girls are coming over tonight and there _can't_ be a baby here. And I can't sleep with a baby here, eith-uh. You have ta do somethin'."

Howard raked a hand through his hair. He needed to see his friends. He needed to see someone, _anyone_. Now. "Ma, I need to take the minivan." There was no way he could get this pumpkin seat on his scooter, he was pretty positive that that wasn't even legal.

No, he _knew_ that wasn't legal.

He expected his mother to squall out something along the lines of "like _hell_ you are," but she didn't. Instead, she mutedly went to retrieve her car keys from the bowl on the front table, and handed them to him.

Without saying another word, she closed the door behind her son and left him standing alone. On his front porch. With a screaming infant.

-

"Howard, I would just like to inform you that you were AFK for over twenty minutes, now how do you expect me to…" Sheldon Cooper drifted off at the sight of what was in Howard's left hand. It looked like a contraption a parent would use to hold their baby in. "Oh, sweet Hell." He sat his laptop down on the coffee table and closed the lid. "Leonard…" he called out nervously. When Leonard didn't respond, he tried again. "_Leonard…_"

Leonard Hofstadter eventually made an appearance in the living room of their apartment. "Whatis it, Sheldon? I was just in the middle of talking to…hey Howard."

Howard stared down at the basket in his hands before retreating his gaze to his friends. "Gentleman, we have quite the predicament."

Leonard stared down at the pumpkin seat in shock, the baby's squalls suddenly reverberating off the walls as it woke up from the slumber that it had fallen into shortly after Howard pulling out of his driveway. "Howard, that's a _baby_."

"Thank you, Leonard." Howard rolled his eyes. "I hadn't been sure."

"_We_?" Sheldon broke out. "_We_ have quite the predicament? No, no, no, Wolowitz. _We_ don't have anything." He pointed down at the pumpkin seat. "And _that_ is unacceptable."

Howard scoffed. "_What_, Sheldon, are you going to give me a strike for this?"

"Oh, do _not_ tempt me." Sheldon replied, standing up from his spot and backing away from the living room and into the kitchen. "Did you even _think_ about how many germs and bacteria you are carrying into this apartment right now? That _thing_ is a living, breathing disease just _waiting_ to happen."

"That _thing_ happens to be my _kid_, Sheldon." Howard found himself defensively throwing back in his friend's face.

"_Your_ kid?" Leonard gasped. "Howard, how did…and what did…and who did…and…oh my God, you have a kid."

Howard uneasily sat down on the couch, sitting the pumpkin seat next to him and staring at it glumly. "Like I said, gentlemen, we have quite the predicament."

The trio remained silent for a few moments, the only sounds being heard having come from the baby.

Sheldon was the one to finally break their silence.

"I still don't see how any of this is my problem."

-

By the time Koothrappali had shown up, the baby had gone from mild squalling to full out screaming. They laid the baby out on the couch and stared down at its red, angry face. The baby stared back up at them as if they were a bunch of remedial elementary school dropouts rather than three physicists and an engineer with a degree from MIT.

Howard supposed that his degree didn't really hold much value in this situation.

Sheldon inched farther and farther away from the baby until he was practically sitting on the armrest of the couch.

"Sheldon, what's _wrong_ with you?" Leonard demanded, staring over at his best friend frustratingly.

Sheldon pointed a shaky finger back at the baby. "Leonard, its head is in my spot."

After that, they ignored Sheldon.

"Maybe we just need to take off the onesie and check to make sure they're not wet or, you know, _worse_ than wet…" Raj suggested, staring down at the baby with his head tilted to the side, as if sizing it up.

Howard blinked back at Raj questioningly. "Which part of the baby is the onesie?"

Raj sent Wolowitz a blank look in return, before crouching down towards the baby and muttering some incoherent phrases in Hindi.

Next thing the guys knew, Raj had unsnapped the three buttons on the baby's outfit and slipped it off of them. After, he went for the Elmo diaper, unfastening it and…

The aroma was instant.

"Oh my God." Leonard wheezed, his hand going to his nose.

Raj's nose wrinkled at the sight in front of him and he turned to look at Howard. "I, uh, I think we found the root of the problem."

"Get the baby _out of here_!" Sheldon choked, staring down at the baby and nearly falling off of the couch.

Howard remained silent, staring at the baby mystifyingly. "It's a girl," he murmured. "I have a daughter." This seemed more unlikely than his mother letting him marry a Mormon girl.

"A very _fragrant_ daughter." Leonard corrected him, lifting his shirt collar to cover his mouth.

"Did you get diapers or formula or _anything_?" Raj asked Howard hopefully.

Howard glanced down into the pumpkin seat, all that was in there was a single diaper and a small packet of baby wipes. He handed them to Raj. "That's all."

Raj sighed and accepted what Howard offered him before turning to Sheldon. "Could you grab some paper towels?"

"As long as it allows me to get away from the smell, _yes_." Sheldon chokes out, pushing himself off of the couch and towards the kitchen. When he returns with a nice pile of paper towels, he shoves them towards Raj with his head turned away.

"Sheldon, the fumes aren't _poisonous_." Howard pointed out annoyingly.

"They might as well be."

The three men stared at Raj in wonder as he seemed to change the baby's diaper with ease.

"How did you learn to do that?" Leonard asked once he was through.

Raj rolled his eyes. "My father is a gynecologist, I know these things." As he picked up the baby, however, she began to shriek at him angrily. "But this whole screaming ordeal, that's out of my hands. Here." He handed the baby back to Howard. "My work here is done."

"I don't know what to do with her!" Howard hissed after Raj as he went to throw away the diaper and paper towels.

"Go get Penny." Raj responded, as if that explained everything. "She has to know some of this stuff."

"She's at work." Sheldon wound up responding before Leonard had the chance to.

"I have to get her formula, I guess." Howard proposed. "I have no idea what _kind_ of formula, but formula." He turned to look at Raj. "Seeing as you're so omniscient about the wonderful world of babies, you can come with me to Babies 'R Us."

"Great." Raj mumbled. "Exactly how I wanted to spend my Sunday." He glanced at Howard helplessly. "Do you know what it will look like for the two of us to be strolling around in there with a baby?"

"I'll come with." Leonard offered. "God forbid anyone mistake the two of you for lovers without me there to witness it."

Howard and Raj sent each other worried glances before Howard glanced down at his daughter. "Well, I guess you'll just have to stay here then, won't you?"

Sheldon stared at Howard confusingly. "Nonsense, Wolowitz." Howard raised an eyebrow at him, so Sheldon took that as is initiative to continue. "I may not know much about infants or the care _of_ infants, but I'm pretty sure that leaving a screaming baby unattended at a house is _not_ the proper protocol."

"She won't be left unattended." Howard snorted, cradling the baby in his arms before handing her off to Sheldon, who held her as if she were a cereal box that he was reading the back of. "You'll be here."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean that I'll be _babysitting_." Sheldon snorted, but by the time he looked up to hand the baby back to his friends, they were already out the door.

He glanced down at the baby and gulped. "Oh, dear."

-

Sheldon observed the baby in his arms for the sixth time in the past ten minutes. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't crying. Her face wasn't scrunched up in some horrified manner.

Actually, she looked peaceful. She looked tranquil. She was sleeping.

"Well, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with you _now_." Sheldon muttered towards her, not that she could respond. "Do I just sit here with you?"

Suddenly, the girl's eyes fluttered open. Sheldon straightened up slightly.

_Don't start screaming, don't start screaming, don't start screaming_…he pleaded to himself.

He had a formula for most things, especially formulas for _stopping_ things.

But, he was pretty confident that he didn't have a single formula that could accommodate a crying infant.

Instead of screaming, she was…_smiling_. She was staring up at Sheldon with her big brown eyes and she had a large, wide smile on her face.

"Well, _hello_." Sheldon found himself greeting her.

She giggled back at him.

She had a beautiful laugh. Sheldon's heart fluttered a little bit just at the sound of it.

Okay, something was _definitely_ wrong

His door opened without a knock being heard and Penny entered the apartment. "Hey Sheldon," she breezed. "I was just wondering if…" she paused and stared at the view in front of her. Sheldon was sitting with a baby. No, he was _cooing_ at a baby. "Holy crap on a cracker." She murmured, hurrying towards the couch and sliding in next to him. "Sweetie, why is there a baby in your arms?"

Sheldon sent her an empty look in return. "Well, I'd assume the most logical explanation would be that a baby was _placed_ in my arms."

She rolled her eyes back at him. "Who picked _you_ as their kid's babysitter?"

"Wolowitz."

Penny snorted, despite herself. "Howard Wolowitz?" she giggled. When Sheldon didn't laugh along with her, not that his laugh was much of a laugh anyways, she froze. "Oh my God. _Howard_ has a kid."

He nodded. "Apparently so. She was left on his doorstep."

"I didn't even know stuff like that actually _happened_. It just seems so…cheesy eighties movie."

"That's because it _was _a cheesy eighties movie, Penny. It was called _Three Men and a Baby_." He stared back down at the little girl and shrugged. "I guess, in this case, it's more like _Four Men and a Baby_."

"And Howard is, like, _sure_ this baby's his?"

Sheldon sent Penny a knowing look and sighed. "Penny, Penny, Penny, do you really think anybody would ever admit to Howard Wolowitz being their baby's father if they didn't have to?"

Penny snapped a finger back at him and nodded shortly. "Good point." She glanced down at the baby and smiled warmly. Sheldon watched in wonder as Penny's face immediately turned into this big gooey smile at the sight of the baby, her eyes twinkled more than he'd ever seen them twinkle. She eyed the little girl's head full of dark hair and then she turned to look at Sheldon, smirking. "She's got that whole Spock-ear thing going on."

Sheldon's eyes widened. "I'm sorry, what?"

She pointed down at her ears in confirmation.

Sheldon glanced down at the side of the baby's head and Penny could hear his sharp intake of breath. She stifled a laugh. "Oh my God, do you know what this means?" He glanced up at Penny anxiously.

"That she possesses the DNA of Leonard Nimoy?" she threw back at him, smirking at the memory of last Christmas.

He narrowed her eyes back at her. "Oh, Penny, always the one with the jokes." He glanced back down at the baby. "No, it means that she _has_ to be Wolowitz's baby."

Penny rolled her eyes. "No, I'm pretty sure that she could just have pointy ears, I don't think it has anything to do with her supposed father being a Trekkie."

"Oh, please." Sheldon snorted. "If any of us is a Trekkie, it's _me_. Wolowitz would be an embarrassment to the Trekkie world."

Penny rolled her eyes and expected Sheldon to elaborate on what the pointy ears meant, but he didn't. He was too mesmerized in the baby to be able to think of anything else.

"Could I hold her?" Penny asked cautiously.

Sheldon seemed perturbed as he glanced from the baby to Penny and back. But slowly, carefully, he eased the baby out of his arms and into Penny's.

The crying was instantaneous. Penny's eyes widened and she stared down at the baby in shock before turning to look at Sheldon, panicked.

"What did you _do_?" Sheldon hissed at her. Penny merely shook her head back at him, staring down at the baby and bouncing her up and down gently, trying to ease the sobs. "Oh, you _clearly_ have no idea what you're doing." Sheldon spat. "Here, let me have her." The moment the baby was back in Sheldon's arms, she silenced.

Penny's jaw dropped, she stared at Sheldon in shock. "Sheldon, do you know what this _means_?"

Sheldon rolled his eyes back at her. "You can quit beating the Leonard Nimoy horse, Penny. It's long dead by now."

"It means you're the _baby whisperer_." Penny hissed back at him, grinning knowingly.

Sheldon shook his head, scoffing. "Preposterous. Here, try again." He handed the baby back to Penny.

The baby took one look at Penny and began to squall. She ran her fingers up and down the baby's belly, but nothing worked. "Sheldon, _do_ something."

The moment Sheldon's face appeared in the baby's peripheral vision, she stopped crying and reverted to giggling at Sheldon, her mouth wide and happy and adorable.

Penny stared at Sheldon with doe-eyes. "Sheldon, she _loves_ you."

"She doesn't even know who I am." Sheldon responded back at her, but she could see the small, proud smile on his face that he was trying so hard to conceal.

"I've never seen this side of you before, Sheldon." Penny appraised. "Maybe you are human, after all."

"Yes, with the five senses and everything." Sheldon played along. "Especially the sense of smell...then again, I'm pretty sure anybody could smell her from within a five mile radius but I am by no means an exception to that rule." He gestured down to the little girl. "You don't want to know what it smells like when-"

"I know what a dirty diaper smells like, Sheldon." Penny cut him off, holding him a hand to silence him. She smiled back in his direction. "I'm really impressed by you, Moon Pie." She handed the little girl back to him and the infant immediately felt at ease in his arms. The two watched as her eyes slowly drifted shut, until she was fast asleep against Sheldon's chest. "Okay," Penny continued, "really, _really_ impressed."

Sheldon glanced back over at her and smiled gently.

The two's eyes were locked on one another until the door opened and Howard's voice broke the stupor. "We come bearing formula." He declared.

Penny leaned back from Sheldon quickly and turned to face their friends, smiling nervously, as if she'd just been caught doing something illegal.

None of the guys seemed to notice. Except Sheldon, that is, who still had his eyes locked on the side of her head.

"The baby stopped crying." Raj pointed out.

"You'd be pretty amazed at the powers this guy holds." Penny explained proudly, jerking her thumb back towards Sheldon. At the sight of her thumb pointed towards his head, he immediately reverted his gaze away from her and returned it to the baby. "He can make a baby go from screaming to giggling in two-point-five seconds."

"Sheldon Cooper good with kids." Leonard murmured, as if trying the phrase out. "Who knew?"

"I didn't know what kind of formula to get." Howard blubbered, ignoring all of the guys' awed statements about Sheldon the Baby Whisperer and hurried to the chair next to the couch. He pulled can after can of baby formula out and sat them on the table, followed by two packs of baby wipes, a rattle, a pacifier, and a small blanket. "Do you think she'll like this? The material won't be too scratchy or anything?"

"He debated over what blanket to get her for ten minutes." Raj explained to Penny and Sheldon.

"He kept pacing back and forth and muttering to himself until he finally picked that one." He pointed to the blanket.

"And then, just in case he changed his mind at the last minute or she wound up hating his blanket, I bought the other one he was debating over." Leonard reached into the Babies 'R Us bag in his hand and pulled out a second baby blanket.

"And then I got this one, just in case." Raj sheepishly chimed and pulled out a third baby blanket from his Babies 'R Us bag. "And this," he reached in the bag and pulled out a plush pig.

Penny smiled at the four scientists. "So, I guess you all have the same weakness: her."

"I wouldn't say a _weakness_." Howard muttered bashfully. "It's just…she's…" he glanced up at Penny and shrugged, a small smile on his face. "She's my daughter." He pointed at the man holding his baby. "And she loves _Sheldon_, for crying out loud."

"We've gotta give her some credit for that." Raj laughed.

Howard glanced at Sheldon tentatively. "Can I hold her?"

Sheldon rolled his eyes as if the answer were obvious. "Well, she's not _my_ child and I didn't ask to hold her in the first place, so _yes_, I suppose you can hold her."

He handed the baby back to Howard and her eyes immediately fluttered open.

Everybody stared at her in anticipation, waiting for her to let out another earth shattering cry.

But, it never happened.

Instead, she stared up at Howard and she smiled so wide that her eyes crinkled. She lifted a hand and grabbed onto Howard's pinky.

She looked like a daughter who had just found her father.

Sheldon smiled to himself and said nothing, hoping that nobody saw how ridiculous he looked. Penny, however, caught the smile and smirked, nudging him with her hip.

"Penny." Sheldon warned her, staring down at their legs. "You're getting dangerously close to my spot."

"So, I don't know if she has a name." Howard stated, he glanced up at his friends. "Do I give one to her or what?"

"Sunday." Raj said simply.

Howard blinked at him in return. "Sunday? For a name?"

Leonard nodded along with Raj. "I like it. Sunday's the day you met her, after all. It can pretty much be forever known as the day you're life changed."

Penny snorted, shaking her head. "I love how unbelievably corny you guys are." She stood up from the couch and stretched before making her way over towards Howard and putting an arm around his shoulder, kissing him on the temple. "She has your smile," she murmured before she made her way out of the apartment.

Howard smiled up at the guys with an accomplished look on his face. "So, all it took to get a kiss out of Penny was having a kid?" He shrugged. "Good to know."

Raj and Leonard shared eye rolls, Sheldon did nothing.

The more Howard stared at the little girl in his arms, the more he saw of _her_. The brown curly hair, the big brown eyes…he knew exactly whose daughter this was. He knew she was almost guaranteed to be brilliant, she would be sarcastic, she would hopefully not be as cold to her boyfriends as her mother.

Hopefully she would take just as much after Howard as she did after Leslie.

-

Sheldon crept out of his bedroom and silently tiptoed through the living room, where Howard was sleeping with Sunday next to him in the swing that Raj had picked up for her at Babies 'R Us and, with the help of all four guys, had finally managed to assemble after two hours.

Everybody was asleep, as they very well should be at two in the morning, but not Sheldon. It wasn't because of the baby, or because of the discovery of Leslie Winkle being the baby's mother. It wasn't even because of Leslie's harsh words to Howard when he'd called her and asked for an explanation (the best she could give him was that she had too much going on in her life and her study program in Vancouver and a baby just didn't fit into her life right now). It was because of _her_.

Penny.

He'd never realized why all the boys were so hung up on her, not until today. He couldn't pinpoint what it was, exactly, about her. He didn't know if it was the way her hair smelled like raspberries or the way her eyes twinkled when she was proud of him. She didn't know if it was the way she said his name or how when she touched him he got the shivers. He was pretty sure it was all of those things and more.

And that terrified him.

He'd never been one to want to engage in the act of human relationships. He'd never really kissed anyone; he didn't know what it felt like to go on a first date. He didn't know the custom for when it was okay to call a girl and when it wasn't. He didn't know any of those things. All that he knew was that Penny made him want to learn those things.

And that was why he found himself, in the earliest hours of a Monday morning, creeping across the hallway to Penny's door.

He could see the light from her apartment glowing out from under the door's crack, so he knew she was still awake. However, that didn't stop him from quietly knocking on the door, just in case.

_Knock-knock-knock._ "Penny."

_Knock-knock-knock_. "Penny."

_Knock-knock_…before he could get to the third knock or her name, her door swung open and there she was; her hair in a lazy ponytail, her face free of any make-up. Penny. Plain and simple.

"Hi," he found himself choking on his tongue. He'd never felt like such an imbecile.

"Aren't you going to get your third knock out there?" Penny asked, a sleepy smile on her face as she crossed her arms over her chest expectantly.

_Knock_. "Penny."

She didn't know why her name on his lips made her smile and she didn't know why her heart had started beating double time when she'd heard his special knock for her on her door. She didn't know why thinking of him was preventing her from falling asleep or why she was so in love with the fact that he was good with kids.

All she knew was that she wanted him to come inside her apartment.

So, she opened her door wider and stared at him invitingly and anxiously.

"Hi, Sheldon."

-

**Okay, so that wound up being WAY more Sheldon and Penny centered than originally planned and for that I apologize!**

**But, I hope you guys liked it :)**

**Hope nothing was **_**too**_** OOC!**

**-**

**R&R and please, no flames!**

**-**

**XOX,**

**Degrassichick**


End file.
